9.1 is almost out

im leveling a new orc

green bean (thanks harvey) from AU Draenor who hates blademasters so bad that she created a whole new martial discipline to kill them

the bladebreaker.

this is only tangentially related to 9.1.

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it’s definitely not satire, just trust me on this one. some sylvanas fans are just deranged.

“is the genocidal war crimes zombie an abuse victim?” is a take i had forced onto my eyes several times and i hate it

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the sylvanas fandom (what an odd series of words to string together) has grown increasingly weird and not normal and as of late has taken things to some very Bad and Uncomfortable places and i have a feeling things are going to get worse and weirder no matter which direction the story goes

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I went to go do one of the Tormentors in Torghast events in the maw and the event started and then never started after the timer ended. The real WoW hell is all the bugs in this patch!

Jailer: The mortals will get no credit for killing the Maw world boss!!

Me a mortal doing the fight with DKs pulling the adds and killing us and losing all our stygia: Aww this sucks!

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Nonsense - who doesn’t love a good coaster ride?

They might as well turn her into a Snickers ad at that point.

“Ranger-General, you’re not you when you’re hungry. Grab a snickers.”

blue eyes

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Not totally crediting WoW’s writing, but I don’t think Sylvanas is just going to be reset to forget everything that happened since she died.

Spoilers Later in 9.1 we restore Uther's soul because it turned out the Jailer had a whole cupboard full of damaged souls stolen by Frostmourne. We only rescue Uther because who cares about the rest of the scrubs? Uther is great though.

He does not suffer from amnesia, but some of his memories got a little corrupted being in storage so long and we have to put it back together. I’m betting we do something similar with Sylvanas so she can recognize the bad things she’s done and therefore magically being forgiven for all of them because this is WoW and any atrocity is entirely forgivable if we feel even the slightest bit bad about.

DRAENOR IS FREE!

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So 100% repeat of Sarah Kerrigan’s “redemption”.

The part of Fenix will be played by the entire population of Teldrassil.

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smokes cigar

Damn shame, Jimmy.

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I think it is fascinating to go that route. It’s always been interesting to look into what makes a person themselves, and how their memories affect who they are.

It reminds me of Linea/Ke’ra from Stargate SG-1. Linea was an old woman the SG-1 team found on the prison world Hadante. She was known as the “Destroyer of Worlds” because she created a plague that killed millions, and so she was justly locked up for her crimes.

When the SG-1 team was manipulated into letting her escape, she is found a few years later on another world, many years younger and going by Ke’ra.

Ke’ra was only trying to help her new found people, and heal who she could, without the knowledge or memories of Linea. In fact when she does begin to remember who she was, she says she would rather die than let Linea win. So what Daniel Jackson decides to do is make her forget again, so she can continue to live out the rest of her days as Ke’ra, while Linea lies forgotten in history.

https://www.gateworld.net/wiki/Linea

Memories are EVERYTHING, to who a person is, and how they are shaped and act. And while I still have a lot of criticisms for the story and gameplay of this current expansion, this is one aspect where I see it as a positive.And in my eyes, makes Sylvanas a bit of a better character.

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in an attempt to further not engage in this, her name is ashigar (one letter away from ashigari, a feudal japanese footsoldier). ashigar is technically of the stormreaver clan, though she’ll likely attest she’d rather be considered clanless. despite her protests, the few orcs who can stand her tend to call her “Stormreaver” or “Ashi Stormreaver” etc, instead of calling her by her real name.

since no shamans or elders wanted to have anything to do with her, she never went through the orcish rite of adulthood. she’s an adult, just not named and deeply culturally shamed. her parents were orcs who signed up willfully for gul’dan’s plan and sold out draenor to the demons. who would want anything to do with her?

an orcish vindicator, it turns out. agram the unbowed, the current and first high vindicator of the hidden orcish paladinic order of the “Way of Wills”, took a certain interest in ashigar. as a teenager, this stormreaver had already honed her fighting style to the point that she could break the blades of novice blademasters, and had even put up a good fight against a burning blademaster of slight renown. all of draenor had abandoned her, but here she was. still fighting.

to stop her from eventually going down the same path her parents did and earn her the name “stormreaver”, agram began to mentor this young prodigy and teach her the ways of the vindicator. though she was fel-cursed, never able to use the light, she could still find strength in conviction and belief. for once, ashigar was well-liked by her peers. through the way of wills, through her prayer and study, she’d risen beyond her origins as the child of sinners.

of course, then everything on draenor happened. and she survived it.

a lot of the mag’har are upset that a greenskin traitor survived where countless uncorrupted heroes died. ashigar is upset that her mentors and colleagues were forced into hiding and that her faith is frowned upon, once again ostracizing her. she doesn’t fit in with the orcs on Azeroth, Outland, or Draenor. nowhere else but in battle against the blademasters who took her parents from her can ashigar say she feels at home.

Ashigar Bladebreaker is a lot of things, and one of them is sharpening her axe.

whats this about sylvanas? i heard orcs… somewhere. orcs? orcs!

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Just to offer some context that I think is important: I think there is a valid point to bring up there specifically when it comes to an upsetting trend of some people fantasizing about Arthas coming back and being given the Kael’thas treatment solely because they think it would be funny/cathartic for him to be the one to kill Sylvanas, which is hella gross on a thematic level.

and that there are a lot of Sylvanas defenders who will intentionally try to frame the broader argument about her character around that in a very dishonest (and harmful) way.

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i will say that it’s ok if people enjoy wow and the story. my own mother does. i think it’s fine that she does. but my mother does not tell me that i, a woman and an abuse victim (among other things), do not understand the nature of abuse and misogyny because i don’t like the Dead Elf Lady’s new story.

like i don’t care if you like sylvanas but the sylvanas fans i mock are the ones coming out the gate throwing my trauma in my face because they think people like me are faceless dudebros who just hate women bro. and i’m never going to stop treating those fans like the jokes they are.

it’s especially annoying when i’m very open about fictional women i do like, and a lot of them fall under the category of “does bad things.” it’s not the genocide that makes me hate sylvanas. it’s the fact that sylvanas’s motivations do not add up to the genocide, and the fact that her development around it is really poor and back and forth. it’s the fact that the character is built on this throne of mystery, and we’re supposed to see her actions as lies, so the sylvanas i knew and loved is not actually syvlanas! but the sylvanas that serves the jailer is not also sylvanas!

also the fact that vol’jin got fridged for this will never not make me salty.

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My biggest concern is if they do go the route of “With only half her soul, Sylvanas wasn’t herself” as a way to handwave away everything she’s done up to this point, then that kind of does to Sylvanas what was done to Kerrigan in StarCraft.

By the end of Brood War, Kerrigan was the undisputed Bad Guy but she had every reason to be even before the Overmind deliberately messed with her personality. Then StarCraft 2 happened, and it went to great lengths to demonstrate that “No, Kerrigan was never evil. It was just what happened to her in an effort to make her into something greater, etc etc”

It made Kerrigan into a hero but it removed a lot of her personal agency into getting to that point. In a weird way it gives this impression that women are only successful if they are A) Evil and if A is true then that’s simply because they are being Manipulated, more than likely by an entity of the masculine (or at least seemingly has all the hallmarks of) persuasion.

If they do that with Sylvanas (Which there’s no reason for them not to, since modern Blizzard has exactly one story and by God are they going to keep using it), then that means pretty much all of Sylvanas’ personal agency up to this point is going to be removed or handwaved away. And while that’s excellent in the sense that post-Wrath Sylvanas’ writing has continued to decline, it’s not so great from the perspective that “This character never had independent agency in the entire existence that you knew her as. If you liked that aspect of her, well too bad my guys because that was 100% a shell program.”

It’s Babylon 5’s Talia Winters only in reverse, but Besker still comes by to leer about how they autopsied the character anyway.

And of course, if the Uther business is also true (I’m not playing so I don’t know)…you all realize Arthas’ Soul was the first one Frostmourne claimed, yes? This ultimately ends with Arthas Menethil being redeemed.

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i have seen more than one person go “sorry that sylvanas isn’t coping with her trauma gracefully, you just don’t like her because she’s not the perfect victim” and it’s like

one, what are you talking about

and two, that’s veering into some seriously weird and uncomfortable territory

the level of attachment some people have developed for this (not even particularly deep let’s be honest she’s a warcraft character) character is becoming worrying

like, taking what is often mild criticism (or even just fatigue) directed at a fictional character and extrapolating that into “oh so you hate abuse victims?? caught in 4k :nail_care:” is not… normal

but then so much of the conversation surrounding wow has gotten weirdly emotionally fraught and increasingly unhinged so maybe this is just an extension of that

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If there has been one story consistent in all of the years I’ve been paying vague attention to this universe, it’s that Blizzard and all parties involved are pretty much incapable of writing any storyline that involves a female character that does not involve 10,000 stereotypes about women in general.

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You know they’re idiots when they brandish the club called “uh you don’t understand Sylvanas’ trauma sweetie” but these same mouth breathers were also typically the types that absolutely and relentlessly buried Jaina Proudmoore in sexist contempt after Tides of War. Like, where was their concern for a woman’s trauma back then?? Why does she somehow get stamped with “ugh she’s just a crazy b----”, why is her trauma somehow less valid than Sylvanas?

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Because Jaina was being mean to the Horde.

That’s not me being snarky either, that’s just accepting the reality of the situation in WoW. That’s me knowing that Blizzard has allowed the Alliance to be decried and booed from the stages at Blizzcon.

Hell, these are the same people who try to make the driving of the Sunreavers out of Dalaran to being on the same level as the dropping of a magical thermonuclear device on Theramore.

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This is your friendly reminder that “Jaina went too far and killed too many” in her quest for vengeance, according to BFA-era Rexxar. :upside_down_face:

that line of dialogue still hurts me to this day

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